What Is the Worst Thing a Bully Has Done to You at School? A Teacher Explains What Parents Can Do
The index card was folded so tight the crease had gone soft. I found it in the stack after my seventh-grade advisory class wrote anonymous answers to that question. Most were predictable: a kid got called “four-eyes”; someone’s backpack was thrown in the trash; a boy was tripped in the hallway. Then one card: “In sixth grade, a girl pretended to be my friend for three months. She collected everything I told her—my parents fighting, my brother’s ADHD, the fact that I still slept with a nightlight—and read it out loud at a sleepover. Everyone laughed. I didn’t cry until I got home.”
I read it twice. Then I put it in my desk drawer, because I didn’t know which kid had written it, and because I was afraid I’d already missed the signs.
That’s the thing about the worst bullying. It rarely looks like the movies. It’s not always a shove into a locker or a threat in the parking lot. Often it’s relational. It uses friendship as bait. It teaches a child that trust is a trap.
A few weeks later, I sat with Maya, a quiet student who had started eating lunch in the library. She wasn’t on my radar for bullying—she was on my radar because her grades had slipped from B’s to D’s and she kept asking to go to the nurse with headaches. When I asked if something was going on, she shrugged. Then she said, “Jenna made a poll.”
“A poll?”
“In our group chat. ‘Who is the biggest loser?’ I won.” She tried to smile. “Then she hugged me after third period and said, ‘You know I love you.’”
Maya had known Jenna since second grade. They had matching bracelets. Jenna had been in her kitchen. That was the worst part, Maya said. Not the poll. The hug afterward.
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